


The Burning Ones

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Angelcest, Begging, Bonding, Claiming, Commanding, Deep Throating, M/M, Rough Sex, instructions, preening, pretentious verbosity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 17:36:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4358201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Gabriel’s smile does spread his lips, even as Michael’s eyes slip away from it on a languid blink, a deliberate exhale. “Tell me, little brother, how often did you hear my call before you answered it?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>At this, Michael is forced to fight down a smile of his own, training his expression to practiced stoicism. Gabriel can read right through it, he always could, no matter what form they took. There’s something to be said for pretense, though, and so Michael knits his brow.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“For as long as it gave me pleasure to ignore it.”</i>
</p><p>Twins will always be twins, after all...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Burning Ones

**Author's Note:**

> New pairing that we think might be our favourite so far, oh boy!

As with much of their existence, their choices rarely seem their own.

They once were guided by a greater force, known to them and still beyond comprehension. They were tools for Him, soldiers and sons and daughters to be directed to particular ends. Sometimes, they understood the purpose of their instruction. Often, they did not. Their strength was in obedience, then, unlike the rebel son cast out of the light.

They would not be like him. They would listen and act.

They would not question.

And then it all went quiet. Silence muted the heavens that once rang resonant with His commands. Emptiness filled the vast celestial kingdom. Yet even now, His vanishing decades passed, it seems only a moment ago in the aeons they’ve existed. Even now, Michael imagines he can can hear the echoes of their Father’s voice pulling them together.

They never plan to meet.

And yet they do.

In empty spaces where neither side of the great war at their backs can see them and call them traitor.

He lifts his eyes towards the sky, and casts them down to the earth. The winged shadow engulfs him long before the swell of dust swirls up from dry soil. At his back, a quiet bootfall, and a susurrus of wings whispering back into place. The archangel of war sets his hands to his blades but does not draw them. It’s comfort enough to know that they’re there; reassurance enough in how the Empyrean steel connects them both.

“Gabriel.”

Just footsteps, heavy only in that they are deliberately so, and a sigh as Gabriel adjusts his coat behind him.

“Little brother.”

The words always carry the same timbre from when they were smaller, when they were still unlearned in the art of their obedience. Words that Michael had grown to love, before he had made himself hate them.

“Decades and decades and we always come back here,” Gabriel sighs, finally stopping shoulder to shoulder with the other angel, eyes forward as Michael’s are, to the small house, now ramshackle, at the side of the dusty cliffs. “You’re growing sentimental. I’m surprised it suits you as much as it does.”

“As lifeless cliffs and cruel blizzards suit you,” Michael reasons. Gabriel watches his brother, not the house, and catches the suggestion of a smile that does not spread beyond the corners of his eyes.

Lowering his hands from the hilts of his blades, Michael stirs dust towards the house.

“Always searching for home, aren’t you?”

He glances back towards Gabriel, and only then does his twin follow him forward.

“I know where home is,” answers Michael. “And it’s just as empty as this.”

“We are in a mood today, aren’t we? It isn’t your fault their weakness has rubbed off on you. Leads one to wonder if there wasn’t wisdom in your youthful indiscretions.”

“Butchery.”

“Slaughter,” Gabriel agrees, and not without a bit of cheer as he passes through the door Michael holds open and shrugs free of his overcoat. “I could learn a thing or two from you yet.”

“You could.”

Michael too pulls his coat loose. The house is not empty, but it is abandoned. A single room, with a kitchen off to one side, its linoleum counters covered in a film of red dust. To the other side, a bed meant for one but surely shared by more, when the family that must have once owned the house and worked the land still lived there.

Before the earth turned arid and the crops withered.

Before their blood soaked into the soil and drying, rose red against the sun.

“Of course, it depends on _what_ you want to teach me, on whether or not I will take to it.”

“You rarely do.”

“Don’t be like that,” Gabriel sighs, head up to look at the cracks in the ceiling as he paces the length of the room and turns on his heel. “We are born opposites, you and I, you the idealist and I the realist. Together we would see truth, instead we tend to bicker, because both of us see our own ends and neither wants to see the other’s.”

“You were always stubborn.”

“And oh, I taught you well.” Gabriel’s smile does spread his lips, even as Michael’s eyes slip away from it on a languid blink, a deliberate exhale. “Tell me, little brother, how often did you hear my call before you answered it?”

At this, Michael is forced to fight down a smile of his own, training his expression to practiced stoicism. Gabriel can read right through it, he always could, no matter what form they took. There’s something to be said for pretense, though, and so Michael knits his brow.

“For as long as it gave me pleasure to ignore it.”

Gabriel laughs, clapping his delight so that it rings around the room. “I wonder what Father would think to see that you’ve become so _funny_ , Michael. That in itself must be one of His jokes, turning His sullen sword into a comedian.”

“There is wine,” Michael says, “beneath the sink.”

With a hum, Gabriel lets his delight ease back. He makes as though to step by Michael, but no sooner does his twin move than he snares him firmly, then softly, by the throat. His fingers spread slow over a rapidfire pulse, and Michael meets his gaze steadily, unshakable, steadfast.

Until he swallows so hard that Gabriel can feel the movement of it beneath his hand.

“It must be tiring keeping pets,” Gabriel muses. “You’ve never been one for that kind of company.”

“And you? Adored, once, rather than feared. Does it please you to see them tremble in your presence rather than glory in it?”

“We are opposites, brother,” Gabriel reminds him softly, shifting his thumb to rest against the soft skin just beneath Michael’s jaw. He watches the way his eyes almost immediately hood, glaze over in practiced and welcome submission though he moves not an inch more. “When you were feared I was revered. And now you keep the pets I like to run ragged.”

Gabriel moves closer, nothing more than a shift of his weight from one foot to the other, but Michael’s eyes lift to his immediately, brows trembling in a furrow before he forces them relaxed again.

“We were taught to share, and that, at least, I have not forgotten.”

Michael tilts his head, a subtle twist that’s stopped as soon as it begins. Only an incremental tightening of fingers beneath his jaw holds him place. In truth, Gabriel does not need even that.

“No,” Michael says. “No, you do not share. You take, life after life -”

“I’m not talking about them,” Gabriel says, low, with another subtle shift to bring him closer. “Your fixation on them is unhealthy.”

“Better to blight them out.”

“Yes.”

Michael’s gaze narrows, his lips thin. The only movement more than that is in his heart, fluttering wild against the cage of his ribs as his body remains motionless. Only after moments have passed, minutes, lifetimes, does Michael press his tongue past his lips and ask, softly:

“What, then, do you propose we share?”

Gabriel hums, and for a moment his brows draw as well, soft and sympathetic, his entire face becoming younger as he does. Less fraught with worry or tension. Less gouged with anger and exhaustion. Gabriel blinks and Michael blinks with him, lips parting as he feels warm breath against them.

“Our burdens, Michael, as we always do,” Gabriel whispers. “Let me take your caring from you, your kindness and leniency.” A smile tugs his lips, a tilt of his head rubs his cheek against Michael’s forehead in a fond nuzzle. “You come to the desert to flood it, little brother. And you call me to watch it consume the world again.”

“As you always have,” Michael whispers.

“As I always will.”

Michael brings a hand up swift to pull Gabriel from him, but finds his wrist caught, held, pinioned by firm fingers that dig between the twin bones of his forearm. His lips curl in a snarl and he steadies his gaze on his twin.

“I was made as He wished me to be made,” whispers Michael.

“His Flood.”

“His Sword.”

“Then why give yourself over to Raphael’s sphere?” Gabriel demands. Michael flinches, teeth bared, at the press of fingernails into the delicate skin beneath his jaw. “It is not your place, little brother, to repair. It is your place to destroy.”

“I have done so. For centuries, for aeons, Gabriel, I have taken more lives than you.”

A quick jerk brings Michael to his knees, black eyes flashing bright as he turns them upward toward his brother. He could give fight, truly, he could equal his brother if not best him outright. His fingers curl to fists on his thighs. His breath steadies, though still shortened.

"And yet how easily you go to your knees," Gabriel murmurs, turning his palm beneath Michael’s chin to raise it. Michael’s eyes narrow but he says nothing. "How obediently and well."

Outside, the sand whispers by the door, hurried along by the endless wind out here.

"Is this atonement?" Gabriel laughs, one sharp shard of sound. "Are you repentant?"

A shiver, then, bright and clear, though Michael’s entire form, a whitening of his knuckles and still no words of denial, still no motion of retaliation. He turns, instead, just enough to have Gabriel cup his cheek. The angel smiles, steps up enough that when he releases Michael’s chin, he presses his cheek to Gabriel's thigh instead.

"Tell me."

Michael’s throat clicks loud in the quiet room, and he rubs his cheek firm against Gabriel’s leg. His eyes slip shut as familiar fingers card through his hair; though these bodies are new, the connections are not. Heat stirs in him as his heart settles.

“I do not owe you that,” Michael murmurs. “You are not our Father.”

“But you feel it anyway, don’t you? Ever since that day - well, days,” Gabriel amends, “outside of Babylon. We broke you. You who were merciless, who were made to be the wrath of an angry God, you weakened.”

“Like armor, sundered,” Michael whispers.

“Never to be so whole and strong again.”

“I have killed our own,” he says, and his voice cracks as Gabriel’s hand fists in his hair and bares his neck. “Dozens. Hundreds.”

"And now you refuse to use them. To enter and control them." 

Michael makes a small sound and spreads his fingers wide against his thighs, eyes barely open, teeth bared until they part with another twist of his brother's fingers.

"Did we break you so entirely? Did your ruthlessness, your strength, escape to me so it would not be destroyed?"

"No."

"Brother." Gabriel clicks his tongue and shakes his head, just a single deliberate turn as though to stretch his neck. "Lies do not become you, they are so filthily human. Tell me, are you this way because of me? The day to my night, am I to blame?"

Michael trembles, shifting just incrementally closer, letting his eyes close in a languid blink. "You saved me."

"From Father? Perhaps." Gabriel purses his lips, lets go of his brutal grip against his twin and caresses him instead. "From yourself?"

"Never."

"I couldn't."

Michael chases the curl of Gabriel’s fingers across his cheek, lips parting over smooth fingertips, seeking to his palm. He holds his mouth there, kissing, breathing, taking in the wild warmth of his twin and wondering at how much Gabriel’s touch feels like his own. Gabriel closes his fingers across his brother’s mouth and shakes his head gently.

Fondly.

“Not entirely,” he agrees. “Your fire burns too hot for me, Michael. The sacred heart within you will immolate me whole should I try to snuff it, and my own would turn to stone, unharmed. We are at an impasse.”

“Then why?”

“Why?”

“Why fight,” Michael asks, eyes closed and brow creased, voice muffled against Gabriel’s hand. For the moment, he is lost to him, he is found by him, the archangel of war is nothing without him and everything with him. He allows his lips to press praise to Gabriel’s pulse, over his wrist as Gabriel spreads his hand wide as if to hold blessing within it.

“We’re closer to my goal than to yours,” Gabriel reasons, gaze fixed on his twin’s sudden tenderness, akin to a sleeping snake that can still strike in an instant.

“Perhaps this too is a test.”

“From Him?”

“To stop the flood myself this time, and be sanctified by that absolution.”

Gabriel’s shoulders shake with a laugh that he keeps soundless, but it’s enough to draw Michael’s eyes to him, to narrow them and have him sigh hot against presented skin. He could bite, could grasp and wrestle and draw him into a fight. He would find himself duly chastened and restrained, reminded, again and again how his brother knows best, because he has been the only one to never leave or forsake him.

The first voice he ever heard.

“There is no flood in the desert, Michael. You cannot be what you are in Vega.” A tool, a weapon, a machine so powerful it will undo itself one day, and Gabriel along with it. One cannot be without the other, bicker though they might. The constant presence of their twin, the constant connection through mind and spirit and body, throughout time - the silence would be deafening.

“Is that what you seek today? Why you curled your hand in the thread that joins us and cruelly yanked it to draw me here? To be sanctified?”

“You summoned me,” Michael reminds him, and he loathes how simpering this body sounds when he speaks, he longs aching for the days when his voice could tear down walls and sunder men in two. Gabriel curls his hand under Michael’s jaw and drags him close, unsteadying him enough that Michael must raise his hands to grasp behind Gabriel’s knees to stop from falling.

Gabriel’s smile widens as he simply says:

“You answered.”

Walls do crumble, then, at Gabriel’s words. Bastions built over centuries fall to rubble and Michael parts his lips to breathe hot against his brother’s groin. The sigh pools back against his lips not with the warmth of human desire but with the promise of destruction in embers, stoked to flame, fed to conflagration. Gabriel stands tall and proud before him, and Michael can do no more than submit to the words of the messenger, their Father’s voice.

He does not move away when Gabriel releases his jaw, but lets it fall slack as Gabriel jerks his belt loose.

It always comes down to this. Whether by a harsh hand or gentle coaxing, whether inebriated and warm with wine or dry-sober and exchanging as many curses as praises, they come together. Often enough to replenish, to comfort and connect. When their feud runs quiet, they spend days here. When their wars rage wild they ravish each other, tearing feathers and skin until they lie sated.

But it always comes to this.

“You clung to me in our eyrie, do you remember?” Gabriel asks him, working his hands slow and deliberate into his clothes and baring himself for the angel that kneels before him. “During your first storm. You feared it would shatter your wings if you took to the air.”

“You told me you would give me yours, if it did,” Michael whispers. Gabriel sets a hand against his head, as though in blessing.

“I still would,” Gabriel says, smiling. “If you would have them, stubborn boy.”

Michael’s eyes hood at the words, and finally slip closed, dark lashes long against pale cheeks. He has sampled worldly intoxicants, he has made himself drunk on wine and sick on mushrooms, overcome by lusts relieved again and again in countless partners. He has experimented with the constraints of this earthly form and found that they are all wanting.

Nothing, in the heavens or on earth, intoxicates him so much as this.

Again and again, Gabriel has given. The swords that have cut through centuries, the commands passed down from their Father, forgiveness and wrath, and he has asked nothing more than for Michael to take what is offered. Michael does now, too, without being asked. Petal-soft lips unfurl, flushed pink, against the full shaft of Gabriel’s cock. Black, coarse hairs tickle his cheek as he curls his tongue around in a slow lick, before sucking firm.

For the closeness Michael keeps with mortals, for the comfortable acceptance of their meager understanding, they would never fathom this. Two halves, split equally from the void of darkness that existed long before their Father ever filled it with light, joining together again. Word and action. Discourse and war.

He wipes away the thread of spit that spans between his mouth and his brother’s stiff length, fingers pressed to swollen lips. Cheeks darkening, Michael keeps his eyes averted from his brother’s majesty, voice rough, low, an echo of how his knees scraped the floorboards when he bowed.

“Have you summoned me again to save me? To punish,” Michael asks, “as you did in Babylon.”

“The world is not ready for another such storm, little brother, as your punishment would create,” Gabriel sighs, dropping his head back as he cards his fingers through familiar black hair, against warm scalp. “And only you can save yourself.”

MIchael huffs a breath, cool against wet skin, and obediently parts his lips again to take Gabriel deeper, jaw working, throat shifting to swallow and caress. He can get lost in this, he does, often, by hands or mouth or cock, this is home for him, familiarity. He makes a sound, deliberate and slightly choked, and Gabriel breathes out a curse that curls against Michael’s skin like silk.

“I missed you,” Gabriel replies at length, lips split into another smile before they part on a sigh. “And you missed me. And you can do so much better,” he chides, ducking his head to look at Michael again, grasping his hair to pull him higher up onto his knees, closer to him, pressed flush, chest to thighs.

Michael’s answer is pressed to the back of his throat by Gabriel’s cock, voice trapped into gagging. He has no reflex for such things, but Gabriel has his own, and Michael slicks his tongue against the base of his brother’s length as it twitches, stiffening in response to the sound. A hum, a hymn, rises from inside the archangel’s chest and reverberates in them both, rising through their joining, echoed in a single note of delight from Gabriel.

Bowing his head, Michael’s lips curve and swell around his brother’s shaft. When the thick head blocking passage to his throat, he breathes rasping through his nose, brushed against by the thick swath of hair. Michael wraps his mouth against the very base, and spreads his tongue flat. His cheeks hollow on a hard suck. His eyes narrow.

No sooner does he relax his throat, no sooner does his heart find steady pace, than Gabriel fists a hand in his hair and pulls him free. Spit spills from his lips, glossing his chin, smeared viscous over reddened lips. Michael gasps, panting, and throws a hand back to steady himself before he's pulled close again.

“You’re laughing,” Gabriel notes, though Michael’s expression has little changed beyond the shock of being ripped free of his brother’s cock. He knows. He always knows. And Michael allows his pleasure to play bare over his features, across the muscles beneath his eyes, reddening his cheeks.

“‘Little brother’,” Michael whispers. His throat is hoarse now, roughened by the deep thrusts against it. “You call me that. You have, for millennia. But we’re twins.”

The echoing clap of Gabriel’s hand firm against his cheek is muffled only by the moan that pours from Michael like a prayer. He is jerked high onto his knees again, head bent painfully, throat bared. His teeth clench as Gabriel whispers with pleasure against his ear.

“Who heard whose voice first, Michael?”

With a small sound, Michael's eyes close again. His hands seek out to grasp against Gabriel's thigh when he turns - tries - into the hand that holds him snared. The first sound he remembers hearing is Gabriel whispering his name. It was the first voice he trusted, the first he recognized, the one he sought through nightmares and hardship for years and years.

The only one to soothe him to sleep.

"You are mine, little brother," Gabriel murmurs, pushing the intimate words against Michael’s cheek. "You know you are but you long to be reminded. It's why this happens with us, millennia and centuries and decades and still this. Always us. Listen," he breathes, as Michael shivers and holds his breath.

"Hear me." He can feel Michael curl his bottom lip into his mouth even as he makes no other sound. Gabriel would know him blind, would find him deaf, it doesn't matter. He aches for his twin as Michael does for him, always.

" _Obey_ ," he breathes. 

It is the spirit that quickens, but spoken so by his brother, so too does Michael’s flesh. Gabriel’s words are spirit, they are life. His need flashes in rapid flickers of his heart, his pulse speeds tingling beneath his skin and pools hot in the pit of his belly. When he remembers to breathe it is with a deep, shaken gasp before he bows once more and takes Gabriel’s cock thick and heavy against his tongue.

He is the Sword, but Gabriel is the Voice. Their Father’s messenger, sent to speak on his behalf. Michael listens because he could do no other; Michael hears because he was made for instruction. A tool of righteousness, not the one who wields it. The Flood, but not the storm.

Relief fills every needy hum that surrounds Gabriel’s twitching length. Michael pays no mind to how jagged his breath sounds, panted against his brother’s belly when he takes him deep. He pays no mind to the spit that slicks his lips and drips in a long string from his chin as Gabriel groans at the sight. Palm against his own hardness, Michael rubs himself to the sound of the only voice besides their Father that he would ever follow, the voice that sundered Babel and called down fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Gabriel’s cock fills his mouth, stretches his lips scarlet, the thrusts make them swollen. Michael braces his free hand against Gabriel’s bare hip and lifts only his eyes to see his brother’s satisfaction. Heavy-lidded eyes and parted mouth, their gaze meets and Michael squeezes between his legs to hold himself at bay.

He has needed this.

He has ached for this.

Every part of Michael’s being cries out for command, to be drawn taut and pointed as an arrow, let loose at the will of another. Obscene sounds, wet and thick as Michael sucks, transgress the noise of the ceaseless wind outside but do not overcome the praise his brother gives him, whispered in angelic tongues that none beneath their rank can understand. Only when his body, this weak and flimsy body, screams out for breath, lungs burning, does Michael jerk his head free with a spill of saliva and a rattling whisper:

“Use me.”

Gabriel cups Michael’s jaw, stroking his cheek, fond and pleased and familiar. This is the beauty of his twin, the epitome of his strength in submission. He is an exceptional thing, when properly wielded, and Gabriel has never once cut himself on this blade, has never been so careless.

Another touch, a shivering whine from his brother and Gabriel tightens his fingers against his face, harder and harder until the grip is brutal enough to hurt even them.

"Down," he rasps, shoving Michael away and watching him uncoil, eyes dark and face a mess. There is a tension of hesitation in him, an invitation in itself and Gabriel takes it gladly. One step is enough to have Michael retreat, another has his wings unfurling long and protective behind him.

He is an exquisite thing.

Gabriel moves as Michael does, his own wings wide, silver where his twin’s are black. It is less a struggle and more a very deliberate coaxing. Weight against weight, soft breaths and endless strength until Michael is on his stomach on the ground, thighs trembling with how wide they're spread, wings pinned useless by the sharp feathers of Gabriel’s above them.

"I said down," Gabriel whispers, kissing behind his ear.

Michael’s lips curl over bared teeth, but there’s no more intention behind it than a dog barking at shadow. He twists, hissing a curse as Gabriel’s wings dig sharp into his own. Heaving his body, Michael tries to buck his brother off, but the weight of Gabriel surpasses what should constitute his body. He contains multitudes.

They all do.

Instead of skittering faster, Michael’s heart eases under the familiar density atop him, fingers curling useless against the dusty floor as another breath across his ear shakes him. Even were he to tear himself free from Gabriel now, he would remain prone. The command echoes in him, reverberant, until the consonants become a wordless hymn droning inside his head. Michael’s very blood is weighted by it, but for that which fills his cock to painful hardness, trapped between his belly and the ground.

Gabriel could end the war in an instant, a simple command, a directive from their Father that would snare Michael to action. It would be a cruelty, depriving Michael of his spirit in that way.

Not even Gabriel is that brutal.

“Do it,” snarls Michael, and his voice pours into a thick and heady moan as Gabriel pulls his belt loose from beneath him and tugs his trousers low. A hand at the flat of Michael’s back keeps him on his belly as he tries to bring a leg up.

"What do you do when I'm not there to give this to you?" Gabriel muses, shoving Michael’s hips up as he presses against him. There is no pain for them in this, human pain nothing compared to what they suffer as angels, and Gabriel couldn’t care less even if it did hurt him.

Michael is a creature of violence and obedience, it is the language he understands best. He will accept the gentleness of humans, the kindness his siblings offer, but this...

This makes him sing with life. Gabriel sinks a hand into Michael’s soft hair and tugs his head up, arching his back, watching him scrabble with useless hands against the ground, watching his wings try to close and splay out again, helpless beneath Gabriel’s own.

"Little bird trapped," Gabriel sighs, rocking in a teasing rub between Michael’s cheeks until he moans, raw and low. 

"Gabriel -"

"Beg,” is all he says. And waits.

The word is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. It pierces Michael and sunders soul and spirit, joints and marrow. Gabriel knows his thoughts, and knows what lies in his heart. Michael tries to twist his hips aside but finds his body in disobedience, bending deep to raise his hips higher. His cock stands stiff, tip pointed towards the earth and spilling already in thick, clear strands that gather in the dust.

“Gabriel,” Michael murmurs. A cry snaps from him as Gabriel jerks his head back further, throat bared. If the humans of Vega who lay their trust at his feet could see him now, their faith would crumble, the city would burn. If they only knew, they could not comprehend.

They were made for this, perfect mirrors of the other.

They would never understand.

“Please,” whispers Michael, voice hissing through gritted teeth. “Use me, brother, big brother, I beg you -”

“Why?” Gabriel’s voice is just as strained, just as harsh, and when Michael moans he very nearly lets himself go. “ _Why_ Michael?”

“Because I’m yours.”

He lets him go. Hands pressing Michael to the ground, one between his wings, grasping at the feathers there, the other lining himself up so he can push in, one long, smooth thrust, filling Michael, filling himself in turn.

And then they go still, just panting breaths and shivering feathers and the whistle of the wind outside. Gabriel presses his forehead to the soft hair at the back of Michael’s neck, nuzzling him, deliberate and slow, a scent marking and claiming as so many creatures on earth had adopted, as humans had evolved out of, but they retain.

Gabriel claims his brother gently before he arches back and thrusts in again, harsh and quick.

“And I’m yours,” he reminds him, and then all pretense of gentleness is gone, and it becomes a battle.

Michael draws a choking breath, as deep and hollow as if it were his very first. Another thrust drives it through his clenched teeth and the earth moves as he shoves his hands beneath himself to loose Gabriel from across his back. Only for a moment can he hold his brother’s weight so, only for a moment before Gabriel straightens his elbow and shoves Michael back to the dust. Feathers tear from Michael’s wings but still he cannot drag them free of Gabriel’s pinning.

They do not need words now, nor would they waste the energy. Not when Gabriel can hear Michael’s curses clear as prayers, not when Michael can hear Gabriel’s benediction inside him. Their bodies fill whatever spaces their minds do not. Michael’s knees scrape across the floor as he tries to drag them beneath. Gabriel’s skin snaps against his own as he spears his brother, again and again, reveling in the sight of Michael’s near-indestructible body parting for his own.

They interlock as wheels, concentric rings spiraling together into a whole. They were born of the same materials, created by the same hand. Together again, they balance ease and violence. Together again they make a whole.

It is a rough taking, a rough reminder, and sometimes they have to be. Sometimes they have the heat and energy to burn and lash out against the only other person who will understand, the only other _being_ who can. They will preen, after, careful fingers over delicate feathers, they will press close and let their hearts find a mirroring beat again.

They are one. Split, once, cruelly for the sake of a war neither wanted. One made into a weapon, one his keeper. Here, they are neither one nor the other. Here they are who they are supposed to be. 

And they are together.

Gabriel’s wings are enough to hold his brother down, his hands seek over him instead. Ruching up his shirt to scrape nails over his skin, slipping to stroke the solid thick heat of him between his legs as Michael moans, growls, trembles with the force of everything.

“Obey,” Gabriel reminds him in a harsh whisper, eyes closed and lips parted against his temple, tasting the sweat and warmth and life of him, the essence and grace of him beneath the fragile human shell. “Let go.”

“No.”

Stubborn, always stubborn, fierce and driven to the bitter end of whatever command is given him by the only two powers in the universe who can make him bend, Michael still fights. He turns his head and snaps his teeth at Gabriel, who just laughs and smears a kiss against his little brother’s temple instead.

What triumph is there in undisputed victory? Enough force can lay low the world, but it is a conquest only when an equal match is met and overcome. Gabriel brings a hand down hard against Michael’s cheek, more insult than damage, and sighs as Michael moans abandon at it.

He lifts his hips quaking, the brute cruelty of their claiming spilling dust into the air. Cheeks flushed and skin hot as embers, Michael takes the savage thrusts and only wants for more. He needs this, they both need this, to feel triumph and defeat and remind themselves of its taste. Only their own blood is shed here, no innocents caught between them. Michael’s eyes fly wide as he feels the trickle of it down his thigh, his feathers ruffle high, voice peaking on helpless gasps.

Gabriel licks the earth from his lips and sighs harshly against Michael’s cheek, wings beating in time with the jut of his hips and the slap of skin against skin.

Michael will obey. He needs only to be reminded.

With a sharp grin, Gabriel whispers against his ear:

“Little brother.”

“No -” It’s breathless, lacking all conviction, and Michael crumbles beneath the taking, and surrenders. He always does, always into the comfort of knowing he will be held and returned to himself, he will press close and remember the smell and feeling of one grace caressing another through thin human skin.

He comes hard, body shaking and wings stirring up dust from the floor, before they settle, trembling, and he beneath them. His breathing draws up puffs of dirt from the floor, quick and irregular, and with a weak little noise, a sob, perhaps, a whimper, he spreads his fingers on the floor and shudders when Gabriel twines his own between.

“Isn’t this better?” Gabriel whispers, forehead pressed to Michael’s cheek as he continues the thrusts, languid and deep, deliberate. “Obedience and acceptance of your place beneath me?”

“Yes,” answers Michael, tightening their fingers together. He squeezes his eyes closed with no mind for the tears that overwhelm him, slipping silently down scarlet cheeks. For now, he need not thrash and struggle. For now, he can be used as he was made to be, wonderfully and fearfully, losing himself to the pulse of wings behind him and the wholeness of his brother joined inside him again.

Gabriel speaks in their Father’s voice, though Michael would not say so, not now, at least. A change comes over him, like trumpets tearing down the walls of Jericho, like the fire that fell on countless sinful cities. Gabriel’s command is a cannon’s boom, a whistling sword, that cuts as deeply into Michael’s spirit as Gabriel does into his body.

Michael brings Gabriel’s fingers to his mouth and parts his lips against them.

“Say my name again,” he pleads, the words tearing softly from his throat. No one, not their Father nor anyone in any kingdom, ever speaks it so beautifully as Gabriel.

A hum, soft and warm, so gentle Michael could cry for it, and Gabriel sighs against him, evens out his movements, takes his time.

“Michael,” he whispers, feeling his brother shudder beneath him again, curl in on himself, bring Gabriel’s hand closer. “Oh, Michael.”

Again and again, soft and kissed against fair skin as Gabriel allows his own body to lose itself to climax, to lay heavy over his sibling, his other half, his soul. Behind them, the wind blows the door open and with a gentle shift, and Gabriel covers them both with his wings, letting the wind take its space back for now, cover them in dust and leave them forgotten. He strokes Michael’s hair, whispers quiet memories of times long gone against him as he curls in and listens.

When the wind grows irritating, a flick of a wing is enough to slam the door closed on shuddering hinges once more.

Michael misses him already, aches for him in the moment that their bodies are not flush together. Gabriel hushes the sole note of protest that Michael utters, and adjusting a wing beneath them, takes Michael around the waist to turn him to his side. Back to chest, Gabriel scatters kisses across Michael's shoulder when the younger angel withdraws his wings. He makes himself small, now, lissome and pale, frail for Gabriel in a way that he would never allow himself to be before the world.

When Gabriel's cock softens and slips free, another sound - pain, soul-deep, as when they first were sundered. Michael writhes slow in the clasp of his brother's embrace and turns to face him, seeking with parted lips to join their mouths instead. Sated, serene, their kiss curls slowly together, reassurance to each other and themselves that although their time together now is brief, it is one of many moments. They will find each other, always, and strive to repair the severance of their souls. They will satisfy nature and desire. They will unite.

No, the mortals of earth would never understand this. How could their fragile forms contain passions that see cities razed and cultures extinguished? How could their minds grasp another so entirely that despite distances of space and time even their thoughts are joined?

Michael brings his fingers to rest on Gabriel's cheek, familiar even in this form. Dark gazes seek the other in the shadow of Gabriel's wings around them.

"Yield," Michael whispers, as he always does, with clumsy words that falter stiff beside the sword-song of his brother's voice. "If He wanted what you say He wants, He would not have sent the Chosen One. Do you doubt it? You've seen our Father's writing, you know, brother - you must -"

“Stop.”

“Gabriel -”

“Do not,” the other growls quietly, eyes closed and arms still around his sibling, feeling him close, taking in the energy and comfort while they both can. “Not here.”

In truth, he does not know what to think or what to say. He sees the signs as clearly as they are painted against the pale skin of that stubborn boy, but he cannot believe as easily as Michael, he was never built to be a weapon, he was built to be the heart to balance Michael out when he locked his away.

With a sigh, he ducks his head down against damp dusty hair and turns his face against Michael. Then, slowly, he retracts his wings.

Or tries, at least, until Michael sets a hand against the wrist of one, fingers ruffling the stormcloud coverts. He sits up slowly, reluctant to part but less so for this, and tugging up his trousers with a grimace, folds his legs. For a moment, Gabriel hesitates, and Michael hears it as much as sees it. But the protest passes, without a word spoken, and Gabriel adjusts with a wing beneath himself, the other spread, to rest his head in Michael’s lap.

Brisk sweeps of slender fingers knock free the dust that has paled his feathers, before Michael seeks each one individually, each one known to him as intimately as his own. With practiced motions he smooths them flat, as his other hand cards slow through Gabriel’s hair.

“You’re becoming soft,” Gabriel notes, eyes closed but smile ever-present.

Michael feels his lips curve briefly in response. “Only for you.”

“An avalanche starts with a single stone.”

“An avalanche starts without warning.”

“All the more dangerous, then,” Gabriel hums, turning his head into the touches, stretching his wing for Michael to reach, to continue preening him as though nothing had transpired, not the rivalry, not the rough joining. Just twins in their eyrie, preening their wings because it is something they have always done.

Without a word, Gabriel rolls to his side to present the other, and shuffles his hips enough to pull his pants back up his legs properly, leaving the belt undone for now.

For a moment, a fleeting instant that cuts short their shared breath, the dusty old house in which they meet feels like home. There is no war. There has been no extermination. They are keeping watchful eye and an ear to duty. Michael lifts his eyes as the door creaks, gently surprised when Uriel does not enter with a crooked grin. Outside, the setting sun has soaked the sky in scarlet.

Michael turns his attention back Gabriel, and watches as grey feathers and dark hair part alike beneath his hands. He knows the answer to the question before he asks it; he knows that Gabriel knows he knows.

“Must you go?”

A soft snort confirms the thoughts overheard.

“Will you call for me again?” Michael asks, instead.

“Will you ignore it when I do?”

The younger brother’s grin appears, bright and sudden and gone, a strike of lightning both rare and lovely.

“Yes,” he decides. “For a time.”

“Stubborn,” Gabriel sighs, pushing himself up on his arms and pressing his forehead to the center of Michael’s chest with enough pressure to tilt him down, crawling atop to dress him again. “Terrible boy. I will stop calling.”

“You can’t.”

“No,” Gabriel laughs, stretching his legs out from beneath himself as he takes one of Michael’s wings against his knees. “But I will.”

“It isn’t nice to lie.”

“You, of everyone, lecturing me on niceties? Vega _has_ ruined you,” Gabriel snorts, fighting down a smile as Michael grins.

He nuzzles Gabriel’s thigh, mindless of the dust and grime that sticks to them both. He rests a hand beside his face and strokes his brother’s leg with his thumb, allowing his eyes to close. An instinct in him, well-honed by none other than the one who now preens carefully through his wings, that might remind Michael of the danger of surrender remains absent. His heart settles, beat by beat, touch by touch, as Michael lays long across the floor.

“I miss this,” Michael says. He need not, they both can feel it - a bruised ache in the center of their chest that has not healed in twenty-five years. Muffled, he turns a kiss to Gabriel’s thigh, and frowns. “I miss you.”

“Now who’s lying? You only want me for my preening.”

“I miss that the most.”

Gabriel curls his fingers in the silken feathers and deliberately tugs, enough that Michael makes a sound and shivers. There is familiarity here, and nostalgia, always. Gabriel soothes the rumpled feathers he disturbed and continues working on Michael’s wings. It is a ritual not to be rushed for either of them. It is intimacy and gentleness, it is a reminder and a promise.

Again. Later. Soon.

Gabriel holds his brother’s wings carefully, bends them as they should bend and watches the strong muscles work to adjust to the motion. That done, he softly presses his palm against the middle of Michael’s back and stands, holding down his hand for Michael to take and join him.

“We didn’t drink the wine,” he notes, eyes to the small kitchen. “Pity. It would have aged well, since the last time.”

They lock hands and Gabriel brings Michael to his feet again. A sway betrays the younger brother’s brief dizziness, before he fastens his pants again and smooths his clothes, flattening his wings. He considers the kitchen. He considers his brother.

And he bends to take up his blades.

“Someday, we’ll manage it.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _Seraphim_ meaning _The Burning One_ ; Islamic angel myth.


End file.
